Birthday Feburary 25, 1943
Birthplace Liverpool
HairDar Brown
Eyes Hazel
Height 5'11"
Weight 142
Favorite Color Purple
Favorite Food Hamburgers
Favorite Music Hillbilly
Likes Drive-In Movies
Favorite Type of Girls Friendly
Brothers & Sisters 2 brothers, 1 sister
George Harrison was born February 25, 1943, making him the youngest Beatle. The only Beatle who's childhood was not marred by divorce or death, he had two brothers, Harold Jr. and Peter, and a sister, Louise. His father, Harold, was a bus driver, and his mother a housewife, who all the kids in the neighborhood knew and liked.
George attended Dovedale Primary school, two forms behind John Lennon, and then Liverpool Institute, one form below Paul McCartney. He showed his independant nature at an early age, defying his school's age-old dress code by wearing jeans and growing long hair. His strict parents did not condone his disrespectful attitude and George soon learned to tone down his rebellion. When the skiffle craze hit Liverpool, George and his brother Peter formed a Skiffle band, but because they were so young, they had to sneak out of the house to play their first engagement.
George and Paul took the same bus to school, and soon found they had music and guitars in common. They spent many hours together at each other's homes practicing guitar. In 1956, Paul introduced the skinny and pimple-faced George to the Quarrymen. George was only 14 at the time. Not old enough to join the group, George hung around with the boys, and came to idolize John, doing everything he could to emulate him. George stood in the back of the room at all their shows with his guitar. A few times he filled in for the regular guitarist who didn't show up, and the boys were also welcomed in George's house by his mother to practice and for an occasional "jam buttie", encouragement which infuriated John's Aunt Mimi. Gradually, George became a member of the group, which by then had come to be called Johnny and the Moondogs.
From the very start of the Beatles' popularity, George was as major a vocalist as John and Paul. As the songwriting of Lennon and McCartney became world-known, George started to concentrate more on writing songs as well, although many of the early songs written while with the Beatles went unrecorded. The first Beatles song written by George was Don't Bother Me. George became a very serious musician who worked dilgently to perfect his playing. His concentration to his playing was apparent while on stage, especially compared to the wild antics of John and Paul.
George almost missed the Beatles' biggest appearance in America, the Ed Sullivan Show, on February 9, 1964, because of a sore throat. He met teenage model Patty Boyd while filming A Hard Day's Night and they got married on January 21, 1966.
Harrison was known as the quiet one of the Fab Four, which conquered the world with 27 number one hits in the United States and Britain.
His credits with The Beatles include the songs, "Taxman," "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something," the latter described by Frank Sinatra as the greatest love song of all time.
Harrison was a fluent, inventive and highly accomplished rhythm and lead guitarist, whose influences included Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins and Chet Atkins. Although he was a creative soloist, several of his famous Beatles guitar solos were recorded under specific directions from Paul McCartney, who on occasion demanded that Harrison play what he envisioned virtually note-for-note.
During the era of Beatlemania, Harrison was characterized as the "Quiet Beatle", noted for his introspective manner A turning point in Harrison's career came during an American tour in 1965, when his friend David Crosby of The Byrds introduced him to Indian classical music and the work of sitar maestro Ravi Shankar. Harrison quickly became fascinated with the sitar, immersed himself in Indian music and was instrumental in popularizing the sitar in particular and Indian music in general in the West. He traveled to India to take lessons from Shankar, bought a sitar himself, and became the first western popular musician to use one on a recording "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)". He championed Shankar with western audiences and was largely responsible for having him included on the bill at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967.
Harrison’s interest in Indian culture eventually expanded to Hinduism and meditation. It was his meeting with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi that led him first into meditation. In the summer of 1969, the Beatles produced the single "Hare Krishna Mantra", performed by Harrison and the devotees of the London Radha-Krishna Temple that topped the 10 best-selling record charts throughout UK, Europe, and Asia. The same year, he and fellow Beatle John Lennon met A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Founder-acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Soon after, Harrison embraced the Hare Krishna tradition and remained associated with it until his death. While during his lifetime, Harrison had bequeathed to the society his Letchmore Heath mansion (renamed Bhaktivedanta Manor) north of London, he redoubted speculations that he would leave ISKCON a large sum in his will: in fact, he left nothing to the organization. [1].
Harrison formed a close friendship with Eric Clapton in the late 1960s and they co-wrote the song "Badge", which was released on Cream's farewell album in 1969. This song was the basis for Harrison's composition for The Beatles' Abbey Road album, "Here Comes The Sun", which was written in Clapton's back garden.
Friction between Harrison and McCartney increased markedly during the recording of The White Album, with Harrison threatening to leave the group on several occasions. The tension between Harrison and McCartney can be clearly seen in several scenes in the Let It Be documentary film and relations became so strained during the making of the film that Harrison briefly quit the band.
While not the primary composer in the group (Lennon and McCartney wrote the vast bulk of the Beatles' material), as time went on Harrison's songwriting improved greatly and his material gradually earned respect from both his fellow Beatles and the public. By the mid-Sixties Lennon and McCartney had become somewhat more accepting of his contributions, although he later said that he always had difficulty getting his songs recorded and only managed to get one or two included on each album.
Notable Harrison compositions from the Beatles' oeuvre include: the intricate "If I Needed Someone"; "I Want To Tell You"; the Indian-influenced "Love You To"; the acerbic "Taxman" (later referenced in Cheap Trick's "Taxman, Mr. Thief" and The Jam's "Start"); the much-maligned "Within You, Without You", which is arguably a foundation stone of the world music genre; "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", which was strongly influenced by the music of his friend Roy Orbison and featured a guitar solo by his close friend Eric Clapton; "Piggies", which later featured inadvertently in the notorious Charles Manson murder case.
"Something" and "Here Comes the Sun"are probably his two best-known Beatles songs. "Something" is considered one of his very best works, and was even covered by Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. His increasing productivity, coupled with his difficulties in getting The Beatles to record his music, meant that by the end of the group's career he had amassed a considerable stockpile of unreleased material.
After the Beatles split in 1970, Harrison released a number of albums that were critically and commercially successful, both as solo projects and as a member of other groups. After years of being limited in his contributions to the Beatles, he released a large number of the songs he had stockpiled in the first major solo work released after the breakup, All Things Must Pass, the first triple album in rock history. It included the number one hit single "My Sweet Lord", although Harrison was later sued for copyright infringement over the supposed similarities to the 1963 Chiffons single "He's So Fine". Harrison denied deliberately stealing the song, but he did lose the case in 1976; in the ruling, the court accepted the possibility that Harrison had "unconsciously plagiarised" the Chiffons song as the basis for his own song.
Harrison was probably the first modern musician to organize a major charity concert. His Concert for Bangladesh on August 1, 1971, drew over 40,000 people to two shows in New York's Madison Square Garden with the intention of aiding the starving refugees from the war in Bangladesh. Classical sitar maestro Ravi Shankar opened the proceedings, which included other popular musicians such as Bob Dylan (who rarely appeared live in the early 1970s), Leon Russell, Eric Clapton, Badfinger, Billy Preston and fellow Beatle Ringo Starr. Unfortunately, however, the concert actually lost money due to expenses.
In addition to his own works, during this time Harrison wrote or produced several hits for Ringo Starr and also appeared on tracks by John Lennon.
Harrison's next album was Living in the Material World in 1973. "Give Me Love" was a big hit, and "Sue Me Sue You Blues" was a window into the former Beatles' miserable legal travails, but overall the record was seen as too overtly religious.
In 1974 Harrison released Dark Horse and at the same time launched a major tour of the United States. The album was not received well, despite the occasional gem such as "So Sad", and the tour got poor notices due to excessive preachiness and Harrison's voice being hoarse.
Harrison continued to issue records throughout the rest of the 1970s. The most successful was Thirty Three & 1/3, which was lighter in tone and featured the hits "This Song" (a satire of the "My Sweet Lord" ruling) and "Crackerbox Palace" (a humourous and surrealistic number, perhaps reflecting his association with members of Monty Python).
Harrsion had formed his own record label, Dark Horse Records, in 1974 and issued a limited number of records by performers such as Splinter, Attitudes and Ravi Shankar. He moved his own output to the label in 1976, once his contract with EMI finished.
Immediately following the murder of his friend and former bandmate John Lennon, Harrison modified the lyrics of a song he had written for Ringo Starr to make it a tribute song to Lennon, "All Those Years Ago", which found substantial radio airplay and continues to be a staple of "classic rock" radio. All the three ex-Beatles performed on it, marking the first time since the break-up in 1970 that the three appeared on one record, although it was expressly a Harrison single. But he released no records for five years after Gone Troppo in 1982 was met with apparent indifference. He returned in 1987 with the album Cloud Nine, co-produced with Jeff Lynne, and enjoyed a hit (#1 in the U.S.; #2 in the U.K) when his cover version of "Got My Mind Set On You" was released as a single; another single, "When We Was Fab", was also a minor hit. The album got to #8.
During the 1980s, he helped form the Traveling Wilburys with Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan, and Tom Petty when they gathered in Dylan's garage to quickly record an additional track for a projected Harrison European single release. The record company realised the track ("Handle With Care") was too good for its original purpose as a single B-side and asked for a separate album. This had to be completed inside 2 weeks, as Dylan was scheduled to start a tour. Released in October of 1988, under various pseudonyms as half-brothers, supposed sons of Charles Truscott Wilbury, Sr., their album was immediately dubbed as one of the top 100 albums of all time by Rolling Stone magazine.
One of Harrison's most successful ventures during this period was his involvement in film production through his company Handmade Films. Since childhood The Beatles had been fans of the anarchic humour of The Goons, and Harrison became a dedicated fan of their successors, the Monty Python team. He provided financial backing for the Python film The Life of Brian after the original backers (EMI Films) withdrew, fearing the subject matter of the film was too controversial. Other films produced by Handmade included Mona Lisa, Time Bandits, Shanghai Surprise and Withnail and I. He made several cameo appearances in these movies, including appearing as a nightclub singer in Shanghai Surprise, and as Mr. Papadopolous in Life of Brian. One of his most memorable cameos was in the cult Beatles parody The Rutles, created by ex-Python Eric Idle.
1989 saw the release of "Best of Dark Horse 1976-1989," a compilation drawn from his later solo work. This album also included three excellent new songs; "Poor Little Girl", "Cheer Down" and "Cockamamie Business," the last of which saw him, once again, looking wryly upon his Beatley past.
The first year of the new decade saw a new Traveling Wilburys album, despite the sad death of Roy Orbison. The band had allegedly approached Del Shannon about replacing Roy, but he also met an untimely death. The album was recorded as a four-piece.
It was not as successful as the previous album, but still managed to stay on the charts for quite a time, spawning the singles "She's My Baby" and "Wilbury Twist".
In 1991 Harrison staged a tour of Japan along with his friend Eric Clapton. It was his first tour since the ill-fated 1974 U.S. tour, and although he seemed to enjoy it more there were to be no others. The Live in Japan recording came from these shows.
Throughout the 1990s, Harrison, a former smoker, endured an ongoing battle with cancer, having growths removed first from his throat, then his lung. There was also a December 30, 1999 attempt on his life by a crazed fan, 35 year-old Michael Abram, who broke into his home, Friar Park in Henley-on-Thames, and stabbed him multiple times, puncturing his lung. Harrison and his wife fought the intruder and detained him for the police. Abram, who believed he was possessed by Harrison and was on a "mission from God" to kill him, was later acquitted on grounds of insanity.
Harrison died in Los Angeles at 1:30 p.m. December 1, 205. His former band-mate Sir Paul McCartney said: "I am devastated and very very sad. We knew he'd been ill for a long time. "He was a lovely guy and a very brave man and had a wonderful sense of humour. He is really just my baby brother."
Fellow Beatle Ringo Starr paid tribute to Harrison, telling the UK Press Association: "We will miss George for his sense of love, his sense of music and his sense of laughter."
His family issued a statement saying: "He left this world as he lived in it, conscious of God, fearless of death, and at peace, surrounded by family and friends. He often said, 'Everything else can wait but the search for God cannot wait, and love one another."'
"He died with one thought in mind -- love one another," friend Gavin De Becker told The Associated Press, adding that Harrison's wife, Olivia Harrison, and son Dhani, 24, were with him when he died.
The youngest member of the world's most famous pop group will always be remembered for his devotion to Oriental mysticism. It was he who persuaded the other Beatles to fly to India and sit at the feet of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
In 1998, when former smoker Harrison disclosed that he had been treated for throat cancer, he said: "It reminds you that anything can happen."
Fans began flocking to Liverpool -- birthplace of The Beatles. Flags in the city flew at half-staff.
Flowers and cards were piled up high around a statue of The Beatles above the Cavern Club, where the Beatles began their journey to superstardom.
Fans also placed flowers and tributes at London's Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles recorded many of their hits.
It wasn't immediately known if there would be a public funeral for Harrison. A private ceremony had already taken place, De Becker said.
Lennon's widow Yoko Ono paid tribute to Harrison, who she said brought magic to the lives of those who knew him.
"George has given so much to us in his lifetime and continues to do so even after his passing, with his music, his wit and his wisdom," she told The Press Association.
"His life was magical and we all felt we had shared a little bit of it by knowing him.
"Thank-you George, it was grand knowing you."
